


Down to the Sea

by sunflower1343



Category: Finder no Hyouteki | Finder Series
Genre: Invented Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 10:29:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10554812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflower1343/pseuds/sunflower1343
Summary: On a slow ship home, Asami thinks about the past that had led him to this point.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those introspective fics from Asami's POV that I tend to write, this one about a made-up past and a mother who was important to him. This was written before the last chapter of NT and I had them leave for Japan immediately afterwards on a ship instead of taking a jet the next morning. It was written for Asami's birthday, 2008.
> 
> ~~~~~~~~

The smell of the sea. He breathed it in as he stood at the rail of the ship that was slowly wending its way back to Japan. The moon wasn't out that night. It was just him and the water and the stars. And memories. Memories always arose unbidden when he faced the ocean. It was, after all, where the most important things happened to him. 

 

"Ryuichi, look at these hands." His grandfather had stood on the sand, holding out shaking hands toward him. They were gnarled from reeling in and repairing nets daily. "You don't want to be a fisherman and destroy that beauty of yours. You don't want to waste your life here. You have a future ahead of you where you'll be more than the rest of us. Listen to your father."

"Grandfather, I don't want to go to Tokyo with him. He just shows up here and says he'll take me all of a sudden. But where's he been the past eleven years? Where was he when Mom was sick and needed him? He didn't care then and he doesn't care now. I know I sure as hell don't care about him!"

"Enough!" His grandfather rarely snapped at him and it surprised him into silence. "You'll go because you can make use of the opportunity. I don't know how he got all that money, but he can provide a good education with it. You probably won't get any affection from him but you won't miss what he's never given you. And besides," the old man laid a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently, "for that you have your grandmother and me, ne?"

He'd agreed, in his youth thinking that they'd always be there, just like that, even though he should have known better after watching his mother die. But she'd always been sick, so her death had seemed fated. His grandparents were healthy and he'd not feared losing them. So when he'd left, promising them to do his best and return a successful man, he'd never guessed it would be the last time he saw them.

 

His father lived in a huge house, a fancy house full of slimy people. Ryuichi had always looked down on the villagers back home a bit because they didn't have the cultured air his mother did. But seeing the friends of his father he realized there were worse things to be, and his male parent was one of them. They were leeches, spending someone else's money, drinking their booze, whoring in all the rooms. He despised them, but unlike many children of degenerates, he didn't become a little moralist in retaliation. 

No, like his grandfather said, he was there for an education. These people were scum, bacteria, and he played them like a scientist, against each other and against themselves until they didn't know who not to trust. But none of them suspected the wide-eyed twelve year old from Hicksville that was weaving the web of deceit around them, calculating, watching them, learning.

It was only inevitable that one day someone bigger and smarter would show up, and he did in the person of one Sakakura Motoo, head of a small but powerful organization that specialized in dealings of a dubious nature. He too, felt some connection with the sea because once he recognized what was happening and who was behind it, he collected Ryuichi and his father and took them down to the bay, to of all things, a warehouse. It was a cliché, but Ryuichi didn't know it at the time.

He and his father knelt in a pool of light in the center of darkness, his father shaking and bowing to the floor, he himself remaining proud and upright.

"I hear you grew up by the ocean, Ryuichi-kun." The voice was mild, but that wasn't fooling him. He'd been playing with the fools in his father's house. He could recognize real danger when he heard it.

"Yes sir." A touch of respect wouldn't hurt. "My grandparents live there."

"Do they?" He could hear footsteps echoing as they walked slowly around him, circling like a human shark, not coming closer, not yet, but waiting for the right moment to close in on prey. He filed the tactic away for future use, noting the softer the voice, the more threatening. 

"I love the ocean. All life on earth comes from it. Did you know that?"

"Yes sir. My grandfather says the ocean is like our mother, giving birth to us and taking care of us." 

"Your grandfather was a wise man." The footsteps approached and came to a halt directly behind them. "It's too bad your father isn't like that." 

There was a metallic click; his father began sobbing. "Please, it was the boy. Please, don't kill me. It was his fault. He's a little demon. Please."

A foot swiftly appeared to his left and struck his dad in the ribs. "Quiet. I'm having a conversation with your son. Though I'm beginning to suspect your wife wasn't quite faithful, was she?"

"Don't talk about my mother!" 

Sakakura paused, surprised, glancing at him. He smiled a fond smile. "It's good for a boy to defend his mother. It's also good for a boy to become a man. Today is that day for you, Ryuichi, your first grown-up choice, and possibly your last. You see," Sakakura signaled one of his men who opened a trap door in the floor, the smells of the dirty bay water rising from the space. "Your father is going to die. It's inevitable. But you, you don't have to. I could use a boy like you, take you as mine, raise you to be a man of power."

He was confused. "That's not a tough decision. What's the catch?"

Sakakura looked around with a smile, lifting his hands in acknowledgment. "You see? He's quite sharp, maybe even worthy. Let's see if he is." His smile dropped and he again faced Ryuichi. "The catch is you have to kill your father. Choose."

There was still confusion in his mind, but the scent of the sea reassured him. He knew what to do. He got to his feet.

"Ryuichi. Son. Don't do it. I loved your mother, I really did."

He paused as he stretched out his hand. "You left her to die, sick and poor, while you partied on in Tokyo with your friends. How is that love?"

"I thought it best for you and her to be away from all of this. I was trying to protect you."

He took the gun. "Greet her for me."

"You bastard! You're not mine. You were never mine!"

"Good." He pulled the trigger.

Once it was over with, he realized it had been the easiest decision of his life. He looked down at the gun in his young hand. It looked good there.

He looked up to meet Sakakura's eyes. "I could kill you."

"You could. And if you survived my men, you'd be alone in the world. Or you could take the money and power and companionship that I offer, and learn from me."

"I wouldn't be alone. My grandparents—"

"Have, alas, met with an unfortunate accident. They were such charming people, too, for simple folk."

Anger unlike any he'd ever known made him raise the gun and futilely pull the trigger, over and over, click click clicking on an empty chamber until the gun was gently pried from his fingers. "You didn't think I'd be so foolish as to risk my life, did you? As exciting as your anger is, I can't allow it free rein. Come, Ryuichi. It's time to start your new life, born at the ocean's doorstep. There's really no other choice left you."

He knew he couldn't win. Not there. Not then. But he knew that someday this man would die by his hand, a victim of his own pupil. He blanked his face and banked the anger in his eyes, but he refused to bow. "Sakakura." Fuck honorifics. There was no one left alive who deserved one. "I will come."

 

He tossed his cigarette butt into the ocean, then slipped his hand into his suit for another. A glance at his watch showed him he still had time.

Sakakura had kept his word, teaching him all he knew, about power and money, the difference between expensive things and things of good taste, about control, and especially about pleasure and pain.

He'd taught him a lot about pain.

Asami had soaked it all in and taken great pleasure in showing his master how much he'd learned thirteen years later, practicing his art on the floor of a dirty old warehouse until the old man's heart had finally given out. He'd kicked him through the same trapdoor into the bay below and walked away cold. 

Suoh and Kirishima were with him that night. It had cemented the bond between the three of them, and that small conspiracy had overturned the organization and made it his. Another moment by the sea.

 

He'd been standing at the edge of the wharf, looking out at the water that now concealed two false fathers. _Thank you, mother._ "This is where it starts. You know that."

"Asami-sama, I made my decision months ago. You're the only one fit to lead this organization into the next century." The night lights around the bay glinted off Kirishima's glasses. His eyes were hidden but his heart was not.

"Suoh?"

"I'm yours." The large blond man had always been one for few words.

"This won't be easy. We haven't the manpower to strike fast and hard so it will be a game of wits, playing them against one another until they find themselves either rallying behind me, or dead. But one wrong move and we could be the ones who die."

He'd caught a shrug from the larger man out of the corner of his eye. He'd turned to the other, using his given name for the first and last time. "Kei?"

"Sounds like fun."

They'd grinned at each other, feral teeth flashing white in what little light there was.

"I swear then, on the blood of my fathers, worthless though they were, that so long as you remain faithful I'll do the same, and you'll not have to fear for your future. You are my men, my first and best men. Never forget that."

They had both bowed. 

"Asami-sama."

 

They had been the first to say it and mean it. It had been gratifying, that moment.

He glanced at his watch again. What was keeping the boy? The doctor should have been done with him long ago. Unless something was wrong... 

An old fear arose.

An unwelcome vision intruded. 

His mother's funeral. He'd been all of seven years old. The mourners had been many. His mother had been sickly, staying at home so she hadn't had many friends in her last years, but the neighbors came for his grandparents. They'd gathered in the early morning for a tradition unique to that village, all in white yukata, the heavy mists from the sea making them look like specters floating along the sands. 

 

The small wooden boats creaked as they all rowed a short way offshore, coming to a stop just far enough out that the land couldn't be seen. There were dozens of boats surrounding them, the villagers' clothes blending with the background so it seemed as if their heads bobbed freely through the air. He clutched his package more tightly. The Shinto priest with them stood above them and chanted, his words echoing over the water, the dampness making his silks shine with an otherworldly glow. 

He was unable to remove his eyes from the man. Perhaps there was a miracle in there for him. Perhaps his mother...

The priest looked down at him, eyes penetrating his hopes and shattering them. "It is time." And reached for the urn in his arms.

"No." He grasped it tighter. "No." To his horror, he felt tears well up.

"Ryuichi, she's beyond our help now. We need to send her home." His grandfather. He hated him at that moment.

"Her home is here! With me." His small body uselessly tried to ward them off, but he was just a child, and weak. The urn was pried from him and the ashes scattered in ceremony, his mother and the sea becoming one, his only love buried in the cold depths.

He'd let his hand trail limply in the water as they'd rowed back to shore.

 

He stared down at the black water, tossing his last cigarette over the rail, unlit, an offering perhaps. She didn't need it. He'd fed her enough bodies over the years that it was only a token. But the night before, when she could have taken one more, when the casino ship had been sinking and Akihito dragged under, she'd spit him back out, a wet bedraggled thing mumbling incoherently about being saved by something large beyond belief. 

She'd been witness to every important moment in his life, watching each one without casting judgment. The best of mothers. He wasn't stupid; he knew his relationship with the water was more symbolic than anything. As practical as he was though, this one time he couldn't believe it was nothing more than coincidence. This one time, the sea wouldn't have cared but a mother might have.

He finally heard footsteps behind him approaching, gaining in speed, and turned just in time to catch a slim body hurling itself at him, trembling in his arms, holding him desperately close. 

"Asami!" It was all the boy said. It was enough for him to hear what was really meant.

Everything important to him, he thought as he lowered his lips to meet Akihito's. 

 

Later, lying sated in bed in their cabin, he breathed in the salt air that came in through the open window, remembering one last thing.

"Promise me, Ryuichi...." she'd said all those years ago. "Promise me you'll wait for someone true and be happy." 

_There's no one truer._ He turned slightly, pulling Akihito closer, his eyes starting to drift shut. _I think you'd like him._

As if in answer, the ocean's gentle waves rocked him to sleep.

 

~end~


End file.
